Tech Tip Tuesday - Hard Drive Installation For Playstation 3

Perhaps you want a larger hard drive for your Playstation 3, or maybe you bought a new one and want to swap out the new ones drive so you can use the older one. In this week's tech tip I'll show you how to do this.

Most of the time when one buys a new PS3 swapping the hard drives is not necessary because it is likely that the newer drive is bigger or has less wear and tear. In this case, simply backing up your old drive to an external hard drive and then restoring it to the new drive is sufficient. However, my old PS3 had a 500 GB drive, so a swap was called for in my case.

Regardless of why you need to swap your PS3's hard drive, you will need a few things before you start. Here is what you will need:

1. One SATA hard drive (preferably larger than the one your PS3 currently has)
2. One external hard drive large enough to store a back up of your current PS3 hard drive
3. One Phillips screwdriver
4. One USB thumb drive (250 MB should be sufficient)

Before getting started, back up your current PS3 hard drive to the external hard drive. If you do not know how to do this consult your PS3 User's Manual. Also, download a copy of the current PS3 firmware to the thumb drive. You can find a dowmload of the firmware here: http://bit.ly/NdoxNR. Be sure that you follow the instructions on that page EXACTLY or the installation of the firmware will fail.

Now you are ready to install the new (swap out the old) hard drive. 

Start by disconnecting all the cords and cables from your PS3. Place the PS3 on the table you are working on with the bottom facing up. You will see a small square on the bottom of the PS3 toward the front. It looks like this:

Carefully pry this little square up and swivel it to the side. You should be able to do this with your fingernail, but if you are having trouble, use a small flathead screwdriver. Just be careful not to break it in the process. Once swiveled away it will look like this:

This is the hard drive holding screw. Using your Phillips screwdriver, remove the holding screw.

Now turn your PS3 up so that the back (where the cables connect) is on the table and the front (where you slide in the discs) is facing up. Just under the power button you will see a panel with the logos for various components (HDMI, DVD, Blu-ray, etc.) 

Slide this panel to the right and then lift it off.

This will reveal the hard drive. On the front of it you will see a small wire handle. Lift this handle and pull out the hard drive. The hard drive will be connected to a drive tray. The two parts together look like this:

Tray bottom 

Drive top

The tray is part of the Playstation and will have to be removed from the old hard drive. To do this use the Phillips screwdriver to remove the four tray screws seen in the top picture (Tray bottom). With the screws removed flip it over as seen in the bottom picture (Drive top). Carefully lift the drive from the tray, holding bracket side first as shown below.

Drive separated from the drive tray

Now place the new drive in the tray and reverse the previous steps to install it in the PS3.

After you have the new hard drive installed in the drive bay, connect the cords and cables and fire up the PS3. If you were doing a swap AND if the old PS3 drive had a current firmware, all should be good and you should not have to do anything else. However, if this is a new hard drive OR if the old PS3 drive did not have a current firmware, you may get a message telling you such. Now, when this happens regardless of whether you are installing a fresh drive or the previous drive, you will be prompted to format the hard drive and install the firmware that you downloaded to the thumb drive. just follow the prompts and you will be up and running in no time.

If your old drive did not have the current firmware and you have to format and intall new firmware, you will have to restore the backup you saved to the external hard drive. Please note that often times when you do this you will lose installed games that you purchased through the Playstation Network (PSN). All your media such as music, videos, and so forth will be restored, but the games will likely have to be re-downloaded and installed. This will not cost you anything since PSN keeps track of all your purchases on their servers. This can be a hassle, but I have found that it is nice to have all the extra space that was taken up by games that I haven't played in ages. Those games are still there if you want to download them, but I find it only necessary to re-download those games that I really played often.

Also note that the above instructions are specific to the Playstation 3 Slim. For older models the instructions are the same except that the drive bay is located on the side of the unit (left side if you are looking at it from the front and the holding tray screws are located and screw into the sides of the hard drive, not the bottom. Other than that, it's pretty much the same procedure.

Once again, please post any questions regarding this tip in the comments and I will address them as soon as possible.